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Report: Eritrean High Schoolers Face Forced Labor, Abuse

Salem Solomon

   For many teens, the last year of high school is a time of excitement
   filled with studies, athletics and dances. But young Eritreans spend
   the year at a military camp preparing for mandatory conscription and
   indefinite national service, where they face physical and mental abuse.
   A new report by Human Rights Watch offers the most detailed look to
   date at Eritrea's conscription system, which forces young people to
   complete their final year of high school in the desert town of Sawa at
   a facility that's part school, part boot camp.
   The report,[1]They Are Making Us Into Slaves, Not Educating Us,draws on
   interviews with 73 former secondary school students and national
   service teachers to provide details on what happens in the camp.
   HRW found that authorities at Sawa keep students under military command
   throughout the year, beat them for minor infractions and force them to
   perform labor. Teachers at the camp are not much older than the
   students. Since they are compelled to serve at the camp, they are often
   indifferent or absent.

   Impossible 'to be a student'
   In an interview with VOA, Laetitia Bader, a researcher at Human Rights
   Watch, said the system makes young people feel helpless.
   "There was this sense that not only were young people not given really
   any control over their destiny," Bader said, "but it was also the sense
   that, in the year at Sawa in particular, it was impossible, really, to
   be a student, to think like a student in such a militarized
   environment."
   Officials have required young people to complete 12th grade in Sawa
   since 2003. Each year, between 11,000 and 15,000 students arrive at the
   camp, according to HRW, a facility the group compares to [2]"a large
   prison" surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.
   HRW also discovered that young people are dropping out of school in
   11th grade to avoid being sent to the camp.
   Students and teachers alike are risking their lives in large numbers to
   flee the country, the advocacy group said.

References

   1. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/08/eritrea-conscription-systems-toll-education
   2. https://twitter.com/laetitiabader/status/1159704316388749312?s=21

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